With the Android market becoming more crowded, it is not as easy to become noticed anymore. While my games all got updated due to new AdMob and scoreloop libraries, the download counts decrease with each update.
Also, it is very hard to place a small app in the market with a fair price, because you have to charge 0.99 $ at least (0.50 €), even if you as a developer know that this might be more expensive than the value you’re able to deliver.
This results in unhappy clients and very bad download counts for small, paid apps like Light Mayhem. To face this fact, I decided to remove the commercial version and merge scoreloop integration into the free app, monetizing with AdMob, again.
The direction, this experiment tends to point to, is not the most pleasing – even Paper Wars which was quite strong through the last months, tends to decrease ad impressions by a great amount. After all, I’m quite happy that I did not decide to go to self-employment for app-development. You will not be able to place a hit with no or low budget, anymore – good for customers because quality improved a lot during the last year, but bad for the lone developer who has no big budget to spend for art and sound.
Anyway, I will continue to support my games as long as it is possible in my spare time. Maybe there will come some content updates as well, but do not expect any major releases any more.
Big thanks go out to everyone who tried my games and was able to give some objective feedback by market comments.
